OLIVE'S RECOLLECTIONS.
It was evening when we entered the old town of Kidderminster. As we
rode along the street to Aunt Dorothy's house, many of the casements
were open to let in cool summer evening air; and from one and
another, as we passed, rose the music of the psalm sung at the
family-worship, the voices of the little ones softly blending with
the deeper tones of the father and mother, or the trembling treble of
age.
It was a heavenly welcome; and, by an irresistible impulse, I
dismounted, for, wearied as I was with the journey, I felt it a kind
of irreverence not to walk. It was like going up the aisle of a
great church. The whole town seemed a house of prayer.
None of these sweet musical sounds, however, came out of Aunt
Dorothy's windows as, at length, we stopped at her door; although the
casements were open. But, as we paused before trying to enter, I
heard the cadences of a soft voice reading in an upper chamber. I
tried the latch, found it open, and, softly mounting the stairs,
through a bedroom door, which stood slightly ajar, I saw a grave man,
habited like a minister, with a broad collar, and closely-fitting cap
on his head, sitting at a table with an open Bible before him. By
his side stood a little serving-maiden, whom at the moment he was
questioning in simple language, in a calm, persuasive voice and with
a remarkably clear utterance, while she answered without fear. His
form was slight, and his gait slightly stooping; his face worn and
grave, yet not unfrequently "tending to a smile," and always lighted
up by his dark, keen, observant eyes. This, I felt, could be no
other than Mr. Baxter. Altogether the face made me think of
portraits of saintly monks, worn with fasting and prayer, save that
the eyes were quick and piercing rather than contemplative; as if he
saw, not dreams and visions of Christendom in general, but just the
little bit of it he had to do with at the moment, in the person of
Aunt Dorothy's little maid. When the little maid had answered, he
turned with a look of approval to some one out of sight, whom I knew
must be Aunt Dorothy. Judging from the fact of the catechizing being
held in her chamber, that she would be equal to seeing me, and that
therefore I had better appear in an ordinary way, I crept softly
down-stairs again, and knocked at the house-door.
Aunt Dorothy was much moved at my coming; although in words she only
vouchsafed a grave remonstrance. And I was no less moved to see how
feeble and shrunken she looked. She had been much enfeebled by an
attack of low fever and although professing to make little of it,
like most people unaccustomed to illness she believed herself much
worse than she really was, and had, dear soul, gone in spirit
pathetically through her own funeral, with the effect so solemn an
event might be hoped to have on the hearts of her misguided kinsmen
and kinswomen.
"Olive, my dear," she said to me, on the morning after our arrival,
after directing me where to find her will, and a letter she had
written, "thou wilt find I had not forgotten thy babes, nor indeed
any of my kindred, unnatural as no doubt they think me. I wish the
letter to be given to your father at once, immediately after all is
over. My example and arguments have had little weight; but it may be
otherwise then. I have no physician but good Mr. Baxter, who is
physician both for body and soul to his people. He hath endeavoured
to reassure me; but I know what that means. And yesterday he gave me
his 'Saint's Rest,' which, of course, is only a considerate way of
preparing me for the end."
All through that week Aunt Dorothy continued marvellously meek and
gentle, her grave eyes moistening tenderly as she looked on the
babes. She commended Annis as a maiden of a modest countenance and
lowly carriage. (I had not ventured to inform her of Annis's
peculiar belief.) She spoke tenderly of every one, and agreed as far
as possible with everything; which last symptom I did feel alarming.
The kindness and sympathy of the neighbours were so great, that it
seemed to me their evening psalm was only the musical Amen to the
psalm they had lived all day. One brought us possets, another dainty
meats, another confections for the babes; others would watch in the
sick-chamber at night; another sent for the babes to play with her
own, to keep the house quiet. If we gave thanks, they said Mr.
Baxter "thought nothing of godliness which did not show itself in
goodness." Another told us how Aunt Dorothy had been borne on their
hearts at the Thursday prayer-meeting at Mr. Baxter's; and more than
one came to "repeat to us Mr. Baxter's last Sunday sermon;" repeating
Mr. Baxter's sermon (he only preached one on Sunday) being a great
ordinance at Kidderminster. Never before did I understand so fully
what the meaning of the word church is, or the meaning of the word
pastor. Before I came to Kidderminster I had thought of Mr. Baxter
as a godly man, rather fond of debate, and very unjust to Oliver
Cromwell (as I still hold him to have been). After staying there
that week, I learned that if the joys of fighting (syllogistically)
were his favourite recreation (which, in spite of all his
protestations, I think they were, for a true Ironsides' soul dwelt in
that slight and suffering body); his work was teaching little
children, seeking the lost, bringing back the wandering, supporting
the weak,--all that is meant by being "shepherd" and "ensample" to
the flock; going before them in every good and generous work, going
after them into every depth of misery, if only he could bring them
home.
As I sat by the window of the sick-chamber where I could see Mr.
Baxter's house on the opposite side of the street, with the people
going in to consult him, the poor patients sometimes waiting by
twenty at a time at his door, and a pleasant stir of welcome all down
the street when his "thin and lean and weak" figure passed out and
along, Aunt Dorothy loved to discourse to me of him. She told me how
in his childhood he had lived in a village called Eaton Constantine,
near the Wrekin Hill, in a rustical region, where Ave Marys still
lingered with paternosters in the peasants' prayers; where the
clergyman, being about eighty years of age, with failing eye-sight,
and having two churches, twenty miles distant, under his charge, used
to say the Common Prayer without book; and got "one year a thresher,
or common day-labourer, another a tailor, and after that a kinsman of
his, who was a stage-player and gamester, to read the psalms and
chapters." Mr. Baxter's father, "having been addicted to gaming, had
entangled his freehold estate; but it pleased God to instruct and
change him by the bare reading of the Scriptures in private, without
either preaching or godly company, or any other books, so that his
serious speeches of God and the life to come very _early possessed
his son with a fear of sinning_." For reading the Scripture on the
Sundays, when others were dancing, by royal order, round the
May-pole, he was called a "Puritan."
Good books were the means of Richard Baxter's early teaching, though
when his "sincere conversion" began he was never able to say. One of
these books (to Aunt Dorothy's perplexity) was by a Jesuit; another
was "Sibbes' Bruised Reed," brought by a poor pedler and
ballad-seller to the door; another was a "little piece" of Mr.
Perkin's works, which a servant in the house had. For all that while
(Mr. Baxter had told her) neither he nor his father had acquaintance
with any that "had understanding in matters of religion, nor ever
heard any pray extempore." Their prayers were chiefly the Confession
in the Prayer-book, and one of Bradford, the martyr's, prayers.
But Mr. Baxter deemed his own sicknesses and infirmities to have been
among the chief means of grace to him. "The calls of approaching
death on one side, and the questioning of a doubtful conscience on
the other hand, kept his soul awake."
His doubts were many; for instance, "whether a base fear did not move
him more than a son's love to God," and "because his grief and
humiliation were no greater;" until, at last, he understood that
"_God breaketh not all men's hearts alike_; that the change of our
heart from sin to God is true repentance; and that he that had rather
leave his sin than have leave to keep it, and that had rather be the
most holy, than _have leave_ to be unholy or _less_ holy, is neither
without repentance nor the love of God."
His diseases were more than his doubts, and his physicians more (and
belike more dangerous) than his diseases. He had thirty-six
physicians, by whose orders he took drugs without number, which, said
he, "God thought not fit to make successful;" whereupon at last he
forsook the physicians altogether. Under which circumstances he had
doubtless reason to count it among his mercies (as he did) that he
was never overwhelmed with "real melancholy." "For years," as he
said, "rarely a quarter of an hour's ease, yet (through God's mercy)
never an hour's melancholy, nor many hours in the week disabled from
work."
Mr. Baxter's being so much indebted to good books as his teachers and
comforters, was perhaps partly the reason why he wrote so many. Of
his "Saint's Rest" he himself said: "Whilst I was in health I had not
the least thought of writing books, or of serving God in any more
public way than preaching; but when I was weakened with great
bleeding, and left solitary in my chamber at Sir John Cook's in
Derbyshire, without any acquaintance but my servant about me, and
sentenced to death by the physicians, I began to contemplate more
seriously on the everlasting rest which I believed myself to be on
the borders of." He originally intended it to be no more than the
length of one or two sermons; but the weakness being long continued,
the book was enlarged. The first and last parts being for his own
use were written first, and then the second and third. It was
written with no books at hand but a Bible and a Concordance, and he
found that "the transcript of the heart hath the greatest force on
the hearts of others;" and for the good he had heard that multitudes
have received by that writing, he humbly thanked "Him that compelled
him to it."
A history which interested me much; for I delight to think of books I
love as growing in this and that unexpected way from little unnoticed
seeds, like living creatures, not as constructed deliberately from
outside, like a thing made by hands. Doth not John Milton say that a
good book is "the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed
and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life; so that he who
destroys a good book commits not so much a murder as a massacre, and
slays an immortality rather than a life."
Much also Aunt Dorothy had to say of Mr. Baxter's good works; how out
of his narrow income he contrived to send promising young men to the
university, and to relieve the destitute without stint, "having ever
more to give," he said, "as he gave more;" how he had been the
physician of his people, fighting against their sicknesses as well as
their sins; how the old were moved by him, who had never been moved
before, and little children were stirred by his eloquent entreaties,
and trained by his patient teaching, so that they brought the light
of love and godliness into many a home which before had been all
darkness.
She said Mr. Baxter was wont humbly to attribute the wonderful
efficacy of his ministry to many causes rather than to any peculiar
power in his words; to the following among others:--.
1. That "the people had never had any awakening ministry before, and
therefore were not sermon-proof."
2. The infirmity of his health. That "as he had naturally a
familiar, moving voice, and doing all in bodily weakness as a dying
man, his soul was more easily brought to seriousness, and to preach
as a dying man to dying men."
3. That many of the bitter enemies to godliness, "in their very
hatred of Puritans," had gone into the king's armies, and "were
quickly killed."
4. The change made in public affairs by the success of the wars;
"which (said Mr. Baxter), however it was done, and though much
corrupted by the usurpers, yet removed many impediments to men's
salvation. Before, godliness was the way to shame and ruin; but
though Cromwell gave liberty to all sects, and did not set up any
party alone, by force, yet this much gave abundant advantage to the
gospel; especially considering that godliness now had countenance and
reputation also as well as liberty; and such liberty (even under a
usurper) as never before since the gospel came into the land did it
possess. And" (said he) "much as I have written against
licentiousness in religion, and the power of the magistrate in it,
yet, in comparison of the rest of the world, I think that land happy
that hath but _bare liberty to be as good as they are willing to be,
and toleration for truth to bear down her adversaries_."
5. Another advantage was the zeal, diligence, the holy, humble,
blameless lives, and the Christian concord of the religious sort.
6. The private meetings for prayer, repetitions, and asking
questions, and his personal intercourse with every family apart.
7. Being able to give his writings, and especially a Bible, to every
family that had none.
8. That the trade of the weaving of Kidderminster stuffs enabled them
to set a Bible on the loom before them, wherewith to edify one
another while at their work. For (thought Mr. Baxter) "free-holders
and tradesmen are the strength of religion and civility in the land,
and gentlemen (_idle_ men, I think he meant) and beggars the strength
of iniquity."
9. His own single life, "enabling him the easilier to take his people
for his children."
10. That God made great use of sickness to do good to many: and then
of Mr. Baxter's practice of physic; at once recovering their health
and moving their souls.
11. The quality of the wicked people of the place, who, "being
chiefly drunkards, would roar and rave in the streets like stark
madmen, and so make that sin abhorred."
12. The assistance of good ministers around.
To these things, and such as these, said Aunt Dorothy, Mr. Baxter
loved to attribute those conversions which "at first he used to count
up as jewels, but of which afterwards he could not keep any number."
All this made me greatly desire the time when I might hear Mr. Baxter
preach; and, at last, on the second Sunday after our arrival, Aunt
Dorothy insisted on my going to church.
The only perplexity was Annis Nye. However, I trusted that Aunt
Dorothy's subdued frame of mind, and Annis's being busy with the
babes or in the kitchen, would avert a collision.
The sermon went far to explain to me Kidderminster and Mr. Baxter.
But no written words will ever explain to those who did not hear them
what his sermons were.
The pulpit was at once Mr. Baxter's hearth, his throne, and his true
battle-field: the central hearth at which the piety of every fireside
in Kidderminster was weekly enkindled; the throne from which the
hearts of men and women, old men and little children, were swayed;
the battle-field where he fought, not so much against sectaries and
misbeliefs, but against sin and unbelief. He was at home there,
close to every heart there; yet at home as a father among his
children. All that he was, turn by turn, through the week--pleading,
teaching, exhorting, consoling, from house to house--he was in the
pulpit altogether; but with the difference between glow and flame,
between speech and song; between a man calmly using his faculties one
by one and a man with his whole soul awake and on fire, and
concentrated into one burning desire to save men and make them holy;
with a message to deliver, which he knew could do both. His eye
enkindled, his face illumined, his whole emaciated frame quivering
with emotion as he leant over the pulpit, and spoke to every heart in
the church.
"Though we speak not unto you as men would do that had seen heaven
and hell, and were themselves perfectly awake," he said. But it
seemed to me as if he _had_ seen heaven and hell (or rather _felt_
them); and as if, while I listened to him, for the first time in my
life, my soul was "perfectly awake" all through.
And of all this, the next generation, and those who never heard him
in this, will know nothing! Instead, they will have one hundred and
sixty little books and treatises, out of which they may vainly strive
to piece together what Mr. Baxter was during those fourteen most
fruitful years of his ministry at Kidderminster. But even if they
could put the fragments together right, they would only have created
an image of clay. And most likely they will piece them together
wrong (as I did before I knew him). And then they will wonder at the
clumsy image, and wonder what gentlemen of the neighbourhood, trained
in universities, in courts, and in armies, and at the same time the
poor weavers of Kidderminster, and the nailers of Dudley, who
clustered round the doors and windows when he preached, could find in
his words so beautiful and so moving.
Most words, written or spoken, are perhaps more spoken to one
generation than men like to think. If the next generation read them,
it is not so much as living words to move themselves, but as lifeless
effigies of what moved their fathers. But with great orators this
must be especially the case, and with great preachers more perhaps
than with other orators. Nor need they complain. Their words reach
far enough, moving hearts whose repentings move the angels in the
presence of God. They live long enough: on high, in the deathless
souls they awaken; on earth, in the undying influence from heart to
heart, from age to age, of the holy lives they inspire.
The large old church was thronged to the extremity of the five new
galleries which had been built since Mr. Baxter preached, to
accommodate the congregation.
When he ceased speaking, there was a long hush, as of reluctance to
supersede the last tones of that persuasive voice by any other sound.
And as the congregation gently dispersed, that sacred hush seemed on
them still. They were treasuring up the words wherewith they would
strengthen themselves and each other during the week; the housewife
keeping them in her heart like a song from heaven; the weaver, as he
worked with his open Bible before him on the loom, seeing them shine
on its verses like the fingers of a discriminating sunbeam.
As I came home, I remember feeling not so much as if I had been in a
church where something good had been said, as in a battle-field where
something great had been done. Death-blows had been given to
cherished sins; angels of hell had been despoiled of their false
"armour of light," and compelled to appear in their own hideous
shrunken shapes; hidden faults had been dragged from their ambush in
the heart, and smitten; the joints of armour, deemed impervious, had
been pierced at a venture; the powers of darkness had been defeated
by being detected; the powers of light had been aroused, refreshed,
arrayed in order of battle, and sent on their warfare, strengthened
and cheered, as the Ironsides by the voice of Oliver. A battle had
been fought, and a campaign set in order, and the combatants inspired
for fresh conflicts. As those living words echoed in my heart, all
the conflicts of armies and politicians seemed mere shadowy
repetitions (like the battles in the Elysian shades) of that eternal
essential conflict between good and evil waged unceasingly within and
around us.
I remember that Aunt Dorothy's first words to me, when I returned,
sounded as if they came up to me on a sunny height, from a strange
voice in some dim region far below.
She said,--
"Olive, dear heart, it rejoices me that you have such a discerning
young woman to serve you. She is, I deny not, a trifle rustical, and
needs instruction as to gestures and forms of address, but, at least,
she is able to perceive how sadly poor General Cromwell has been
seduced from the ways of humility and uprightness, and has failed in
protecting the people of God."
Nevertheless, these words were not without something consolatory in
them for me. Much as Aunt Dorothy and Annis had, belike,
misunderstood one another as to what they meant by the "people of
God" whom the Captain-General failed to protect, it was evident they
were still so far on friendly relations with each other. And it was
also plain to me that Aunt Dorothy's militant faculty (and therefore
she herself) was recovering.
A very opportune improvement. For on the following day came letters
from Roger and Job Forster announcing the battle of Dunbar, which
those who fought it looked on as an act of the great warfare between
good and evil, as truly as any of Mr. Baxter's preachings. In which
belief Aunt Dorothy and Mr. Baxter agreed with them; but not as to
the sides on which the combatants were ranged.
The first letter from Dunbar was from Roger, dated September 2nd:--
"A word to thee, Olive, my sister, by the post who is to carry
letters for the Lord-General. Ill news travel fast, and if such have
reached thee before these, I would have thee know, though our case is
low enough, our hearts are not daunted.
"I write in my tent on my knee--wind and rain driving across this
wild tongue of land, dashing the waves against the rocks, whistling
through the long grasses of the marshes, as in the sedges by old
Netherby Mere. Nothing to do but to keep our powder dry, if we can,
and pray.
"The enemy think us caught in a worse Pound than my Lord Essex at
Fowey. Even the General thinks little less than a miracle can save
us. But maybe the miracle is wrought already in the courage of our
men, without a grain of earthly food to sustain it; the miracles of
the New Covenant being, for the most part, inward.
"For months we have been watching them up and down the hills and the
shores round Edinburgh, yet never able to tempt them to a battle.
And now they deem us trapped and doomed, which may work to better
purpose on them than our challenges. To all appearance their
boastings are justified.
"The ships we hasted into this 'trap' to meet (sorely needing fresh
victuals), are nowhere in sight. Through his knowledge of the
country, the enemy has possessed himself of all the passes between us
and England. His army is on the bill above us, twenty-three thousand
strong, with veteran generals, threatening to sweep down, and with
'one shower, wash us out of the country.'
"We with but eleven thousand to meet them. Many of ours lying sick
in the town of Dunbar.
"In all Scotland not another stronghold is ours.
"Among them is the shout of a king, 'a Covenanted king;' whatever
strength may lie in that! Many of their soldiers godly men and brave.
"I think we shall not be suffered to dishonour the good cause or the
General by lack of courage. But victory is not in our hands. And
what may be in God's, I am no prophet to tell.
"Between us and England an army twice our number. Between England
and the old tyranny, as we deem, nothing but Oliver and his eleven
thousand. A thought to nerve heart and hand.
"'We are sensible of our disadvantages,' as the General saith. 'But
not a few of us stand in this trust, that because of their
numbers--because of their confidence--because of our
weakness--because of our strait, we are in the Mount, and in the
Mount the Lord will be seen; and that He will find out a way of
deliverance and salvation for us.'
"The sea and the waves roaring, but as yet, God be praised, no man's
heart failing him for fear. Farewell! Whatever comes to-morrow I
would have thee know we are not dismayed to-day."
And, enclosed, a few lines from my husband:--
"This campaign has been one of more occupation for the leech than the
soldier," he wrote. "The wild weather, and food not of the best or
most plentiful, with lying out on the wet moors, always restlessly on
the watch for battles which never came, have shattered the troops
more than many a hard fight. Sickness is on all sides. The
Captain-General saith the men fall sick beyond imagination. He
himself has not escaped. The foe I fight with has left me little
intermission. The prospect of a battle, such as hangs over us in the
thousands gathering on Doon Hill through the day, and now ready to
sweep down the slopes, seems proving already to some a better physic
than any of mine. A wound is doubled when the spirit is wounded, and
half healed when the spirit is cheered.
"Never fear for me, dear heart; I know I am where my task is set.
And I keep as well as men for the most part do who have plenty to do
and hope in doing it."
"Ah," sighed Aunt Dorothy, "snared in their own net at last! Did not
Mr. Baxter write to the well-disposed in the sectarian army, warning
them of the sin of going to war against the godly in Scotland; 'for
which, O blindness!' quoth he, 'they thought me an uncharitable
censurer.' Remarkable providence!" she concluded; "to have actually
run of their own free will into a place which as if it had been
ordained from the beginning to be just such a trap."
"Had we not better wait till we see whether they get out, Aunt
Dorothy?" said I.
"Get out, child?" said she, fierily; "I think better of them, with
all their transgressions, than to believe they are bad enough to be
suffered to prosper in their evil ways! Mr. Cromwell himself was, or
seemed to be, in the Covenant once."
But that very evening flew through the land the news of Dunbar
victory: these letters having been delayed by coming round through
London. The Scottish forces were totally routed. As Mr. Baxter
said, "Their foot taken, their horse pursued to Edinburgh; when, if
they would only have let Oliver's weakened and ragged army go, or
cautelously followed them, it would have kept their peace and broken
his honour."
For neither Mr. Baxter nor Aunt Dorothy thought it at all a
"remarkable providence" that Oliver and his army had thus escaped.
It was plain, on the contrary, she thought, to all right-thinking
people, that their successes, so far from proving them right, only
proved that they had gone too far wrong to be corrected.
A few days afterwards arrived a letter, sent me by Rachel Forster
from Job.
It began:--
"See Psalm 107. (_O praise the Lord, all ye nations; praise him all
ye people._
_For his merciful kindness is great towards us; and the truth of the
Lord endureth for ever. Praise ye the Lord_).* We sang it on the
battle-field yesterday. The shortest psalm that is. Made on
purpose, belike, for such a service and such a congregation. For we
had no time for more. We sang it, Oliver and the foremost of us, on
the halt, before the rest came up for the chase. The music rolled up
grand, like the sea, from the hollow of the brook against the hill of
Doon. We had cause to sing it, and the whole land hath cause. Never
better. Do thou sing it, dear heart, at Netherby, and let Mistress
Olive sing it, and the babes listen, and Mistress Annis (if she will
unlearn her perverse ways); 'old men and children, young men and
maidens.' For their 'covenant with death' is broken. The snare is
broken, and we are delivered. And not we and England only, but all
the godly throughout the three kingdoms; if they will but see.
Surely they must see; kirk-ministers and all, 'spite (as the General
saith) of all their sullenness at God's providences, and their envy
at Eldad and Medad and the Lord's people who prophecy; their envy
(saith he) at instruments, because things did not work forth their
platform, and the great God did not come down to their thoughts.'
* In Mr. Rous's version:--
"O give ye praise unto the Lord,
All nations that be;
Likewise, ye people, all accord
His name to magnify.
For great to usward ever are
His loving-kindnesses;
His truth endures for evermore,
The Lord O do ye bless."
"They hung above us on the hill of Doon, twenty-three thousand
strong, all through the night. A wild night it was; the waves
roaring, the cold rain driving across the tongue of land where they
thought us trapped. But we prayed, and watched, and kept our powder
dry, which was as much as we could do. We had some scant shelter
under tents and walls. They, poor souls, had none; and before dawn
they put out all their matches but two to a company, and lay down
under the corn-shocks. Oliver did not wait for them to burst on us;
nor for the morning to break. We did not wait for his word to be on
the alert. A company of us were in prayer at three o'clock, with a
poor cornet (one of the Eldads and Medads), when Major Hodgson rode
past and stopped to join, and found strength in it, as the day proved.
"We were to have charged before they woke. But there were delays in
getting all the men forward. So before we had gathered we heard the
enemy's trumpets wake up one by one in the dark, along the hill-side.
Then the moon broke from a cloud, and, with the first ray of dawn,
made light enough to see where we were going, when at last all the
men came up, and the trumpets pealed out all along our line with the
English battle-shout, and the great guns.
"Their cry and ours met: '_The Covenant!_' and '_The Lord of Hosts!_'
And with it we and they met, met and closed in death-grapple for
three-quarters of an hour; company to company, man to man. Once we
were pressed back across the brook in the hollow, their horse
charging desperately. No hearing the winds and waves roar then.
Then we charged back, horse and foot,--such a charge (many say) as
they never saw--back again across the hollow of the brook. That
charge was never returned. We heard Oliver's voice, '_They run, I
profess they run!_' And then the sun broke across the field, and
with it again Oliver's voice, '_Let God arise, and let his enemies be
scattered._'
"And scattered they were. Three thousand dead in the hollow of the
brook. (Three thousand whose hands we would fain have held as
brothers. God knows how Oliver entreated them sore, and how they
gave us hatred for our love.) Ten thousand prisoners. The rest
flying right and left through the land. An army gone in an hour.
"An army of brave Scottish men, godly men many of them doubtless;
ministers there in store to bless them (no Eldads and Medads, but
covenanted kirk-ministers), all swept away like the chaff of the
summer threshing-floor.
"Will they not yet see? Not our courage did it; they were brave as
we. Not our numbers; theirs doubled ours. Not our field: they chose
it. The passes of the hills were theirs. What then? Can any fail
to see? The lie that is among them makes them weak, the false oaths
to a false Covenant sworn at their command, against his will and
conscience, by the poor, false, young Stuart king. The difference is
the difference in our battle-cries. '_The Covenant_,' good once (far
be it from us to speak scorn of it), good twice, but not good always;
strong against one evil yesterday, not strong against all evil for
ever. And '_The Lord of Hosts_,' Almighty against all evil for ever.
Not His own Covenant even, as far as it is but written in stone; much
less theirs, though signed with their blood; not His own Covenant,
though 'confirmed by an oath,' so much as _Himself_ living to confirm
the oath.
"As the Lord-General saith, 'What He hath done, what He is to us in
Christ, is the root of our comfort; in this is stability; in us is
weakness. Faith as an act yields not perfect peace; _but only as it
carries into Him who is our perfect peace_. Rest we here, and here
only.'*
* "What God hath done, what He is to us in Christ, is the root of our
comfort: and this is stability; in us is weakness. Acts of obedience
are not perfect, and, therefore, yield not perfect peace. Faith as
an act yields it not; but only as it carries us into Him, who is our
perfect peace, and in whom we are accounted of and received by the
Father even as Christ Himself. This is our high calling. Rest we
here, and here only."
"Truly soldiers have cause to sing the 109th Psalm who have such a
General to lead and speak to them; although, in the eyes of the kirk,
he be but an Eldad. I trust I meddle not with things too high for me
after the lesson I have had. Often, dear heart, I long for thee, and
thy comfortable speech and smile.
"Master Roger and I talk over many things by the camp-fires when most
are asleep; we knowing old Netherby, and thee, and so many other
things the rest know not. He is heavier and graver than I would see
him, save where there is work to be done.
"I doubt there is somewhat gnawing, without noise, as worms and
blights do, at his heart.
"There was the pretty lady at the hall, now among the Hivites and
Perizzites (so to speak) in France. I know nothing, but that he
never speaks of her and hers. And they were aye together, he and she
and Mistress Olive, in the old days.
"Poor brave young heart, mine is sore for him many a time. It is not
all who get such plentiful wages beforehand as I, Rachel, in thee."
Which last sentence Rachel had annotated with,--
"The goodman means no harm, Mistress Olive. But on that matter he
could never be brought to see plain, say what I would."
The next Sunday a Thanksgiving was appointed by the Parliament ("the
Rump") for the victory of Dunbar. This Mr. Baxter openly
disregarded; using his influence, moreover, to persuade others to do
the same. He did not hesitate in his sermon to warn his hearers of
the sin of fighting against a loyal Scottish Covenanted army; while,
at the same time, he blamed the Scots themselves for "imposing laws
upon their king, for forcing him to dishonour the memory of his
father, and for tempting him to take God's name in vain by speaking
and publishing that which, they might easily know, was contrary to
his heart."
So, in the afternoon of that Sabbath which Mr. Baxter refused to make
a day of thanksgiving to Kidderminster, I held a private thanksgiving
service in my own chamber.
At first, in my solitude, my spirit was too busy with protesting
against Mr. Baxter to be at leisure for praise.
At the doors of some of the houses opposite, quiet groups of weavers
were gathered, in their Sunday best. In all the town, Mr. Baxter
rejoiced to think, there was not one Separatist. The Quakers (he
fondly believed) he had silenced, at a discussion held in his church.
One journeyman shoemaker, indeed, had turned Anabaptist, "but he had
left the town upon it."
No "Eldads and Medads" had troubled Kidderminster with irregular
prophesying; "for," said Mr. Baxter, "so modest were the ablest of
the people, that they were never inclined to a preaching way, but
thought they had teaching enough by their pastors."
"Among all these busy brains and stirring hearts," I thought, as I
sat at my window, "not one that differs from Mr. Baxter; while Mr.
Baxter differs in so many directions from so many people that fifty
books have been written against him."
The thought of a whole town walking on such a narrow path, step by
step after Mr. Baxter, with those fifty precipices and "bye-paths" on
all sides, had something appalling in it;--appalling in its monotony,
and in its precariousness. What kind of a place would England be to
live in if it were all brought to this Kidderminster standard? Not
very pleasant certainly for any journeyman shoemaker who was
unfortunate enough to turn Anabaptist! Perhaps in the end a little
wearisome even for Mr. Baxter himself, when no one was left for him
to silence.
I need not have perplexed myself with such speculations. Long before
the experiment reached that stage, Mr. Baxter's own eloquent voice
itself was silenced, and his faithful words made doubly precious to
his flock by the prohibition, on peril of imprisonment or fine, of
ever listening to them again.
Nor was a slumbrous unanimity by any means the danger England had
then to dread.
As I opened my Bible and read the Dunbar Psalm, and sought to make
melody with it in heart, my quiet chamber seemed to become a side
chapel of a vast cathedral. I felt no more alone. A thousand
services of song seemed going on around me. From Dr. Jeremy Taylor
silenced in Wales, and good Bishop Hall near Norwich, and numerous
little companies in old halls and manors, meeting secretly to use the
Liturgy banished from churches and cathedrals. From these same
ancient churches and cathedrals, where hundreds of "painful
ministers," like Mr. Baxter, Joseph Alleine, or John Howe, were
leading the devotions of the people in psalms more ancient than any
Liturgy, and prayers new as every morning's mercies. From Puritan
armies in Scotland, covenanted and uncovenanted. From meetings of
Quakers, many of them in prisons. Beyond these again, from Lutherans
and Calvinists in Protestant Europe; and doubtless also from
countless devout hearts in Catholic cathedrals and convents. And
farther off still, from the Puritan villages in the wilderness on the
other side of the sea.
At first this concourse of sounds scarce seemed a concert. Babel has
smitten men with deeper divisions than those of speech. Too many of
the prayers sounded terribly like anathemas. Too many of the psalms
like war-cries.
Until, as I still listened, the roof even of this vast cathedral of
Christendom seemed to melt away into the firmament of heaven. Then I
found that there was a height whence all discords, which were not
music, fell back to earth, and whence all the discords without which
music cannot be, flowed up in one grand River of Praise, in at the
Gates of Pearl.
The burden of the song seemed simply that old prayer, "Our Father
which art in heaven."
But from the crystal fiery sea into which that river flowed, rolled
back, as in an echo of countless ocean waves, the antiphon,--
"_Great and marvellous are Thy works, Lord God Almighty. Just and
true are Thy ways, Thou King of Saints!_"
Then the thought came to me, "Mr. Baxter, however, with all his
moderatings and balancings cannot antedate these harmonies. Aunt
Dorothy says he believes he has found the exact middle point between
every extreme--Calvinism and Arminianism, Episcopacy, Presbytery,
Independency. But, unfortunately, to other people it is but a point.
Aunt Dorothy cannot quite balance herself on it. It is certain the
whole world cannot. It is doubtful if any one can, except Mr.
Baxter."
The harmony is made, not by each trying to learn the whole, but by
each keeping faithfully to the part given him to learn and sing,
though the part be only a broken note here and there.
And I thanked God that all the efforts of the worst men, or the best,
to anticipate that majestic anthem of conflicting and embracing sound
by a thin unison of voices, had never succeeded, and never could
succeed, as long as men are men, and the second Man is not St. Paul,
or Apollos, or St. John--but the Son of Man; the Lord from heaven.
LETTICE'S DIARY.
"_Paris_, 1650, _September_.--It is a new world in which I find
myself, here, in the hotel of Madame la Mothe. Save Barbe and
myself, not one Protestant is of the circle.
"The loneliness is sometimes oppressive, courteous as all are. It is
not so much the condemnation of Protestant England, as an unfortunate
island shattered from the rest of Christendom by the earthquake of
the Reformation, which makes me feel how far off we are from each
other, as their incapacity to comprehend the divisions which are
convulsing our country. 'From shattering to pulverizing, the process
is but natural,' a good priest said the other day. They seem to look
on us as the dust of a ruined Church; and between one atom of dust
and another--between atoms Episcopal, atoms Presbyterian, and atoms
Independent--they have no sunbeam strong enough to distinguish.
"_Paris, October_ 1_st_.--This morning Madame la Mothe, always
anxious for my welfare, and now and then awakening to spasms of
conviction that my welfare means my 'conversion,' took me to hear an
excellent priest, called Singlin, preach.
"'I do not go often myself, my child,' she said, 'because the power
of M. Singlin's sermons is redoubtable. They sweep people away from
transitory ties, like a torrent. Now, while M. la Mothe lives, this
is a danger to which I scarcely venture to expose myself. He is, as
you see, more aged than I am. And what could he do without me? When
I married him, I was a child; he a man of high reputation, who had
made his mark in the world. It was considered a brilliant destiny
for me. It has been a tranquil and a happy destiny. He was ever to
me the most considerate of friends, guiding me through the
temptations of the world like a director, generously providing me
with the pleasures suited to my age, and consoling me like an angel
when our only child died. I could never abandon him now.'
"Many things were strange to me in these words. This married life
seemed so strangely dual, instead of one. She spoke of him rather as
leading on than going with; rather as providing her joys than joining
in them; rather as consoling her griefs than sharing them. And as
strange seemed to me this mingled, love and dread of M. Singlin's
sermons.
"We dressed, and set off for the church.
"'Surely, Madame,' I said, as we walked through the streets, 'no good
man would advise you to abandon home and M. la Mothe?'
"'No, certainly,' she said; 'not advise. But he might make me feel
the world so hollow and momentary, all its relationships so
transitory, that an irresistible attraction would draw my heart from
the world, like that of the young lady you see on the other side of
the street, Mademoiselle Jacqueline Pascal. And what comfort, then,
would my husband have in my going through life, by his side indeed,
but as a machine wound up to its work, with the spirit elsewhere!'
"And she pointed out to me a maiden habited much like a nun, moving
silently along with downcast eyes.
"'See, my child,' she whispered, 'one of the trophies of M. Singlin's
eloquence, or, at least, of the doctrines he enforces. A young
person of good family, daughter of M. Etienne Pascal, counsellor of
the king. At thirteen she was a poetess. She charmed the Queen,
Anne of Austria, and the Court, by her verses on the birth of the
Dauphin, his present Majesty. She captivated all by the point of her
repartees. At fourteen she won from Cardinal Richelieu her father's
pardon for some political offence, by her marvellous acting in a
drama. Her brother, Blaise, works miracles of science--literally
miracles. He has weighed the air, and made a machine which
calculates. She is beautiful, accomplished, not yet twenty-six; the
most brilliant prospects open to her; the only unmarried daughter of
an indulgent father who loves her tenderly. She hears M. Singlin.
His words give the seal to her vocation. She renounces
everything--the Court, the world, the family as far as she can, her
genius, her wit, herself.'
"'You mean she renounces her genius by consecrating it.'
"'I mean she _renounces_. Hereafter God and the Church may
consecrate. But who can say? What are our talents to Him? His
Providence can destroy a navy by a whirlwind or by a little worm.
Henceforth she reads only books of devotion and theology. She writes
no more poetry. She denies herself the manifestation of her dearest
affections. Until her father freely consents to her profession, she
yields, indeed, so far as to remain in his house. But she makes her
home a convent, her chamber a cell. She spends the day there in
solitude--last winter without a fire, bleak as it was--reciting
offices, reading books of piety. She only joins the family at meals.
And of the meals, as far as possible, she makes fasts, refusing to
warm herself at the fire. Charity alone, and devotion, bring her out
of her retirement. When her sister's child was dying of the
small-pox she nursed it night and day with devoted tenderness. She
would, doubtless, have done the same for the child of a beggar; so
entire is her consecration. Soon, no doubt, such piety will vanquish
all objections; her father will yield (if he lives), and she will
enter Port Royal. And this is one result of M. Singlin's eloquence,
and of the power of his doctrine. You will confess it is a power,
beneficent indeed, but formidable.
"'Formidable indeed, Madame,' I said, shuddering, for I thought of my
own father. 'Fire, I think, to the brain, and frost to the heart.'
"'Alas, my child!' she said; 'how should you understand what is meant
by genuine Vocation, or a thorough Conversion?'
"To me, indeed, this seemed not conversion; but annihilation.
"We were silent some way on our return from the church.
"'You were arrested,' said Madame la Mothe.
"'It reminded me of a Puritan sermon I once heard in England,' I
said; 'speaking of the world as a "carcass that had neither life nor
loveliness." Only M. Singlin seemed to include more in what he meant
by the world than the Puritan did.'
"'That is what I should expect,' she replied. 'The higher the point
of view, the more utter must seem the vanity of all below. Does he
not make life seem a speck of dust, its history a moment? yet each
speck of dust on the earth a world, and each moment a lifetime, as to
its issues, radiating as these do through eternity!'
"When we came back, Madame la Mothe gave an ardent account of the
sermon to an Abbe, a cousin of hers, who happened to be visiting at
the house.
"To my surprise, he solemnly denounced the recluses of Port Royal,
with M. Singlin and their directors. He called it a conspiracy.
"He said: 'A renegade Capuchin has (as they confess) been the means
of the conversion of their adored Abbess, Angélique Arnauld. The
Arnauld family, the soul of the whole thing, were Protestants in the
previous generation; and (as the Spaniards say) it takes more than
one generation to wash the taint of heresy from the blood.'
"At this point Madame la Mothe considerately introduced me.
"'With the Protestants we are on open ground, he said, bowing
graciously to me. 'Mademoiselle will understand I spoke
ecclesiastically. But these Jansenists are conspirators. They are
digging mines underneath the altar itself. However, the Pope lives,
and the Order of Jesus is awake. We shall see which will perish--the
sanctuary, or the mine which was to explode it.'
"'Is it true,' I asked Madame la Mothe afterwards, 'that the Abbess
of Port Royal owed her first impulse heavenward to a Protestant?'
"'They have told me, indeed, it was a renegade monk who so moved the
young Abbess' heart,' she replied. 'The miserable being, it is said,
spoke so forcibly on the blessedness of a holy life, and on the
infinite love and humiliation of our Lord in His incarnation.'
"'Perhaps, then, he knew the blessedness of a holy life,' I said.
"'He was a wretched fugitive, escaping from his convent, my child,'
she replied, a little impatiently. 'But what of that? Was not
Balaam one of the prophets?'
"Two things, however, give me a kind of mournful consolation.
"One is, that, deny it as they will, there is an undying link between
the holy people of Port Royal and those of the Protestant Church. I
like to think that. Not only has their piety a common source in the
same Sun, but it was enkindled by the touch of a poor heretic hand
they would refuse to grasp in brotherhood. They will have to grasp
that poor hand by-and-by, I like to think; and then, not reluctantly!
"And the other consolation is, that divisions are not confined to
Protestants; a consolation both as regards the Roman Catholics and
ourselves. For it seems to me, wherever there is thought there must
be difference; wherever there is life there must be variety. Life
and sin; these seem to me the chief sources of religious difference.
God only knows from which of these two fountains each drop of the
turbulent stream flows. Life, which must manifest itself in forms
varied as the living, varying as their growing; sin, which adds to
these varieties of healthy growth the sad varieties of disease,
infirmity, excrescence, or defect.
"_Paris, October_ 2_nd_.--A battle at Dunbar, on the coast of
Scotland.
"Another defeat. 'A complete rout,' my father says in his letter,
which is very desponding. He is very indignant with the Scots, who
will not let the king's 'loyal servants and counsellors' come near
him, or even fight for him, but drag him about like a culprit and
preach sermons to him, 'once,' he says, 'six in succession.' (And,
here, His Majesty had not the reputation of being too fond of
sermons.) He is also grieved with the king himself; at his signing
the Covenant, at his publicly condemning his royal martyred father's
acts, and his mother's religion; and, above all, at his suffering
himself to be conducted in state into Edinburgh, under the gate where
were exposed the dishonoured remains of Montrose, who so gallantly
died for him not six months before. 'Nevertheless,' he concludes,
'we shall all die for him when our time comes, no doubt, as willingly
as Montrose did. And after all, the true mischief-makers are the
priests. From the Pope to the kirk preachers, not a disturbance in
the world but you find them at the bottom of it. Let all the
theologies alone, sweetheart. One is as bad as another. Say thy
Creed; keep the Commandments; pray the Lord's Prayer. And remember
thy old father.'
"_January, Chateau St. Rémi_.--We have come to M. la Mothe's country
chateau for the Christmas.
"The Abbey Church of Port Royal des Champs is our parish-church.
Madame la Mothe often takes me there.
"The first morning after our arrival she took me to the edge of the
Valley of Port Royal.
"It is rather a cup-like hollow in the plain than a valley among
hills. Its sides are clothed with a sombre mantle of ancient
forests,--at the further end sweeping into the plain into which the
valley opens. A broad rich plain with rivers, woods, corn-fields,
now ploughed into long brown ridges for sowing; towns, villages with
spires and towers, all stretching far away into a blue dimness.
"The recluses who occupied Les Granges, the abbey farm on the brow of
the hill where we stood. must find their prayers helped, I think, by
this glimpse into the wide world of life beyond. The nuns at the
bottom of the valley must lose it.
"The valley was entirely filled by the convent.
"'It is like a vase carved by the Creator Himself for the precious
ointment whose odour fills all His house,' Madame la Mothe said.
"To my unaccustomed eyes it was more like a prosperous village than a
monastery.
"In the midst, the great tower of the church; close to it, the
convent itself, with its lofty roofs, arched windows and gateways,
turrets and pinnacles; around, the infirmary, surgery,
weaving-houses, wash-houses, bake-houses, wood, corn and hay stacks,
the mill and the mill-pond, and fish-ponds; the new and stately hotel
which is the retreat of the Duchess de Longueville, with the
residences of other noble ladies; and beyond, the kitchen-gardens and
meadows divided by a winding brook from the 'Solitude,' where, amidst
groups of ancient trees, and under the steep slopes of the wooded
hill, the nuns repair for confession and meditation. Even then, on
that winter-day, I thought I perceived the gleam of their white
dresses among the trees.
"As we look, Madame la Mothe told me some of the scenes which had
been witnessed there within the last fifty years.
"Not fifty years since, the abbey had been a place of restless gaiety
and revelry. Light songs and laughter might have been heard echoing
among the woods, when the child Angélique Arnauld was appointed
Abbess.
"She then described the great king Henri Quatre with his courtiers
invading the valley in the eagerness of the chase, and the child
Abbess with her crozier in her hand marching in state out of that
grand arched gateway at the head of her nuns, and warning His Majesty
from the sacred precincts; the king gallantly kissing the queenly
child's hand, and obeying her behests.
"Then the renegade Capuchin, finding one night's shelter in the abbey
on his flight to a Protestant country, preaching in that church of
the 'blessedness of a holy life and the love of Christ,' so as to
awaken the young Abbess in her seventeenth year to the vision of a
new world and a new life, which, in a subsequent sickness, deepened
into thorough conversion to God.
"The 'Journée du Guichet,' when the Abbess Angélique began her
attempts to reform and seclude the nuns by refusing to admit her own
father within the grating; by the long fainting-fit with which her
resistance ended, showing him what the effort cost her, and
convincing him of her sincerity.
"The reform of Port Royal. Its growing reputation for sanctity. The
mission of the young Abbess to reform other convents; the thronging
of new nuns under her rule, until the valley (then undrained) became
too small, health failed, and all the community had to remove for
fifteen years to Paris.
"The arrival of the Abbess Angélique's brother, M. Arnauld d'Andilly,
and the other recluses, to take up their abode at the deserted abbey,
then half in ruins, the meadows a marsh, the gardens a wilderness.
The draining of the marsh and rebuilding of the abbey by the hands of
these gentlemen, working to the sound of psalms.
"The return of the Abbess Angélique, with her long train of
white-robed daughters, welcomed with enthusiasm by the peasants. The
one meeting of the recluses and the nuns, eighteen of them of the
Arnauld family; as the brothers led the sisters into the church they
had worked so hard to restore, and then retired to the abbey farm, to
see each other no more except at the church services through a
grating.
"As I looked down, nothing struck me so much as the stillness. To
the eye, the valley was a place of busy human life. To the ear, it
was a solitude. No discordant noises came from it, no hum of
cheerful converse, nor voices of children at play. The nuns have
large schools, which they teach most diligently and intelligently;
the best ever known, it is said. But the children are accustomed to
play, each by herself, quietly. The nuns think they like it as
much,--after a little while. They are also never allowed to kiss or
caress each other. Caresses might lead to quarrels, and are, besides
(the nuns think), a weakening indulgence of emotion.
"I hope they often read the little ones the gospel which tells how
the Master 'took the little children in His arms.' They must need it.
"The stillness had a sacred solemnity; but there was something of a
vault-like chill in it, which crept over me like a shadow, as we
descended the steep path, strewn with moist dead leaves among the
roots of the leafless trees.
"I should like better to have seen Port Royal when, as in the wars of
the Fronde a year or two since, it became a refuge for the plundered
peasants of the neighbourhood, the infirmary filled with their sick
and aged, the church with their corn, the sacred napkins for the
altar torn up to bind their wounds.
"Through the grand arched gateway we went into the inner court, and
thence into the church, where the nuns were chanting the service.
"Their music seems all kept for the church. Sin and eternity! These
two thoughts seem to hush all the music at Port Royal, except such as
goes up to God. It was a solemn thing to hear the hundred voices
joining in the severe and simple chants to which they tune their
lives so well.
"Madame la Mothe was pleased to see me moved as I was by it.
"'In England, you have scarcely a choir like that,' she said.
"'Not quite,' I replied; yet not to mislead her with false hopes as
to me I could not help adding,--'With us the singers are not gathered
into a choir, but scattered through the Church; in scattered
Christian homes throughout the nation. And the pauses of the psalms
are filled up by family joys and sorrows, and by the voices and
laughter of little children; which, it seems to me, make the psalms
all the sweeter and truer.'
"But more solemn than this general assembly it was to me to see, as I
have this evening, while I was in the church alone, that motionless,
white robed, kneeling figure keeping watch in the dusk before the
'Sacred Host' on the altar. One silver lamp radiated a dim and
silvery light into the recesses of the empty silent church; the lamp
never extinguished, the prayer never ceasing.
"That kneeling worshipper seemed to me herself a living symbol and
portion of the Perpetual living Sacrifice, in which the One sacrifice
unto death is for ever renewed; as Christian heart after heart is
enkindled to love, and sacrifice, and serve; as the Church, redeemed
by Him who offered Himself up without spot to God, offers herself up
in Him to do and suffer the Father's will, to drink of His cup and be
baptized with His baptism; His living body, the fulness of Him that
filleth all in all.'
"As we came up the hill my heart was full of that thought. We turned
and looked back over the valley. The massive towers threw long
shadows over the meadows, silvered with dew and moonlight. The broad
lake shone, like the tranquil lives of the sisterhood, mirroring the
heavens.
"On the other side, on the brow of the hill, the lights of Les
Granges showed where the recluses were keeping their watch. A
deep-toned bell from the abbey church struck the hour.
"Then, in the deepened hush of silence which followed, the soft chant
of the nuns came stealing up the slopes. As we listened, it seemed
to be answered from above by the deep music of men's voices from Les
Granges.
"We listened till the last notes died away. I never heard church
music which so moved me as those unconscious antiphons, where the two
sides of the choir could not hear each other, whilst we heard both.
It made me think of so many things: of the many choirs on earth who
sing a part, and cannot hear or will not recognize each other's
music, while God is listening to all; of the two sides of the choir
in heaven and earth; and of the voices in the higher choir which I
should hear no more on earth.
"I felt lifted into a higher world. And we two walked home in one of
those restful silences which sometimes say so much more than words.
"It broke a little rudely on this when, at the gate of the chateau,
M. la Mothe's servant met us, exclaiming:
"'Ah, madame! M. le Comte is much agitated. He says it is ten
minutes after the time when madame brings him his posset.'
"We hastened into the salon. M. la Mothe was indeed much agitated.
"'Pardon me, my friend,' she said; 'I am ten minutes late.'
"He pointed to the clock.
"'Ten, madam!' he exclaimed. 'Fourteen and a half, at the least!
when the physician said every minute was of consequence. But we must
bear it, no doubt. Neglect is the portion of the aged. And madame
has her salvation to accomplish, no doubt! In my youth married women
accomplished their salvation in accomplishing the comfort of their
husbands. But times change. In a few months I shall, no doubt, be
beyond the reach of neglect; and then madame can accomplish her
salvation without further interruption. Heaven grant it may prove
your salvation after all! Those learned gentlemen, the Jesuits,
think otherwise, and they have great saints among them.'
"I shall never forget the sweet humility with which she acknowledged
the justice of his reproaches, and tact and tenderness with which she
soothed his feeble irritability into tranquillity again.
"'You mean well, no doubt, my poor friend!' he said at last, with a
lofty air of forbearance; 'and no doubt we shall not soon have such
an omission again.
"'Ah, my child!' she said to me, as she came into my room afterwards;
'if you had only known how good he was, and how patient with me, when
I was wild and young! These little irritations are not from the
heart, but from the brain, which is over-tasked and tired. He had no
sleep last night on account of the gout, and I read aloud to him
romances, insipid enough, I think, to send me asleep in a house on
fire. But they had no effect on him, the pain was so acute.'
"The tears came into my eyes. She thought nothing of her own fatigue.
"'You need not pity me,' she said, with her own bright smile. 'I am
an easy, happy old woman, far too contented, I fear, with the world
and with my lot in it. If I have any virtue, it is good temper; and
that is scarcely a virtue, not certainly a grace--indeed, merely a
little hereditary advantage, like skin that heals quickly.'
"'I was not pitying you, madame,' I ventured to say; 'I was only
thinking how much better God makes our crosses for us than they make
them even at Port Royal.'
"'Alas, my child!' she sighed; 'there is no need for the holy ladies
and gentlemen of Port Royal to make their own crosses. The Jesuits
are preparing plenty of crosses, I fear, for them. But do not, I
entreat you, dignify such little prickles as mine by the name of
crosses.'
"I made no answer, save by kissing her hand. For I thought her
crosses were none the worse discipline because to her they seemed
only prickles; and her graces all the more genuine and sweet because
to her they seemed only 'little hereditary advantages.'
"It is such a help to 'crosses,' in the work they have to do for us,
when they have no chance of looking grand enough to be set up on
pedestals and adored; and it is such a blessing for 'graces' when
they are not clothed in Sunday or 'religious' clothes, so as to have
any opportunity of looking at themselves at all.
"Good temper, kindliness, cheerfulness, lowliness, tenderness,
justice, generosity, seem to me to lose so much of their beauty and
fragrance when they change their sweet familiar home-names (which are
also their true Christian names) for three-syllabled saintly titles,
such as 'holy indifference,' or 'saintly resignation,' and pace
demurely about in processions, saying, in every deprecatory look and
regulated gesture, 'See how unlike the rest of the world we are!'
"'_When saw we Thee an hungered?_?'--how much that means! It was not
so much, I think, that the 'righteous' had not recognized the Master
in their acts, as that they did not recall the acts. They did not
recognize the sweet blossoms of their own graces, because His life
had gone down to the root, and flowed through every stem and twig of
everyday feeling, and overflowed in every bud and blossom of
every-day words and works, as naturally and inevitably as a fountain
bubbles up in spray. It was not His presence they had been
unconscious of, but their own services. For it seems to me just the
acts religious people least remember that are the most beautiful, and
that Christ most remembers, because they flow from the deepest
source; not from a conscious purpose, but from a pervading
instinctive life.
"In such unconscious acts the noble men and women of Port Royal are
rich indeed. I love, for instance, to think how M. de St. Cyran,
when himself a prisoner in the Bastille, sold some of the few
precious books remaining to buy clothes for two fellow-prisoners of
his--the Baron and Baroness de Beau Soleil--and said to the lady who
undertook the commission for him, 'I do not know what is necessary,
but some one has told me that gentlemen and ladies of their condition
ought not to be seen in company without gold lace for the men and
black lace for the women. Pray purchase the best, and let everything
be done modestly, and yet handsomely, that when they see each other
they may forget, for a few minutes at least, that they are captives.'
Madame de Beau Soleil's beautiful 'worldly' lace will perhaps prove a
more religious robe for M. de St. Cyran than his own 'religious
habit.'
"The selling of the church plate at Port Royal to relieve the poor is
certainly as much a religious act as the buying it. The voluntary
desecration of their church into a granary, to save the corn of the
poor peasants from plunder during the wars of the Fronde, was
certainly a true consecration of it. The lovely wax models which the
sister Angélique makes to purchase comforts for our Royalist
countrywomen, heretics though she believes us to be, seem (to us at
least) a labour of love sure not to be forgotten above. The delight
in acts of kindness to others, for which Blaise Pascal is said to
torture himself by pressing the sharp studs of his iron girdle into
the flesh, may prove to have been more sanctifying than the pain by
which he seeks to expiate it. The homely services which Jacqueline
Pascal rendered her little dying niece on the nights she spent in
nursing her through 'confluent smallpox,' may prove to have been more
'divine offices' than those she spent so many nights, half-benumbed
with cold, in reciting.
"And so, after all, from the most self-questioning religious life, as
well as from the lowliest life of love that scarcely dared call
itself religious, may come that same answer of the righteous. He who
scarce dared lift his eyes to heaven, saying with rapture, 'Was it
indeed Thee to whom I gave that cup of cold water?'--and the austere
Puritan (Catholic or Protestant, saying), 'Was it indeed the
_feeding_ and _clothing_, those little forgotten acts of kindness I
thought nothing of, that were pleasing Thee?"
"_February_.--I wonder what Olive is doing and learning. These
misunderstandings of God and of one another perplex me at times not a
little. I wonder if she has any perplexities of the same kind in
England?
"This morning Madame la Mothe told me a beautiful saying of M.
Arnauld d'Andilly, brother to the Mère Angélique, when some one was
exhorting him to rest, 'There is all eternity,' he replied, 'to rest
in.'
"This evening I repeated this to Barbe. She replied: 'It reminds me
of a saying of a good pastor of ours, who said, when some one tried
to comfort him in severe sickness by wishing him health and rest,
"Mon lit de santè et de repos sera dans le ciel."'*
* Told of M. Drelincourt, pastor of Charenton, who died in 1669.
"The two sides of the choir again!--taking up the responses from each
other without knowing anything of each other's singing! How
wonderful it all is! This deafness to each other's music; these
misunderstandings of each other's words! this deafness to what God
tells us of Himself in the Gospels, and in the world; these
misunderstandings of Him! And His patient listening, and
understanding us all!